THAT DANGEROUS ENERGY & UNDERCOVER LATINA out now! New climate fiction publishing project, Fighting Chance Books!

2022 was quite a year! My first middle grade novel; I started a climate fiction publishing imprint and ended the year with my latest climate thriller, THAT DANGEROUS ENERGY…

A young Black artist in a love triangle with a fossil fuel mogul and a climate activist. At first, she thought her boyfriend’s old oil money would be her ticket to the good life. After all, he had taken his company and gone green, right? But when she learns that it’s all just greenwashing, she begins spying on him for the movement. Will she find the evidence that could be a gamechanger in the climate crisis? Or will she learn that a billionaire will go to deadly lengths in order to protect his wealth?

This is my boldest climate justice novel yet. It continues with the same setup from my last three climate justice novels, SIDE CHICK NATION, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE and QUEEN OF URBAN PROPHECY. The protagonist is a woman of color is going about her life, when she is heavily impacted by the climate crisis and becomes activated into the movement. But as I have become more immersed in the climate justice movement IRL, my novels are moving from focusing on raising awareness of the climate emergency as a problem, and starting to focus on climate solutions. 

October 2022 saw my debut middle grade novel and first hardcover, UNDERCOVER LATINA! A 14-year-old homeschooled Latina spy gets her first solo mission: to pass for white, and befriend a geeky 9^th grade boy in Arizona. Will she be able to handle the learning curve of high school, plus comic books and gaming? And can she outwit the boy’s estranged dad, a white nationalist terrorist. . . all while remembering not to blow her cover by speaking Spanish?

My other major project is Fighting Chance Books! This is our moment.  Fighting Chance’s mission is to CHANGE THE NARRATIVE of climate fiction. Currently, what we call climate fiction is largely futuristic dystopias that all presuppose that we fail to take effective action in this moment. Other stories rely on aliens, superpowers or exceptional individuals to save the day. I am grateful to the sci-fi fantasy community for sounding the alarm for three generations. And now it’s time to add another story. Fighting Chance is an imprint of She Writes Press and seeks novels for adults by writers of all genders. Starting in 2023, we will be publishing novels about people fighting in the here & now for a livable future on this planet. THIS IS HOW WE WIN.

Queen of Urban Prophecy

OUT NOW from Kensington Books! Also out in audio from Recorded Books.

A young starlet rapper faces unexpected public scrutiny when she releases a song about a girl shot by police after school, and a girl with the same name gets killed by police under those circumstances. Meanwhile, her national tour is increasingly hot as she criss-crosses a nation ravaged by global warming. Can she learn how to use her platform for activism on behalf of Black lives and climate justice?

 

Also out from Kensington and Recorded Books:

Aya’s first standalone novel is out now, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE. A young Black woman attorney working for the FBI is unexpectedly sent to infiltrate an African American eco-racial justice organization. But when she encounters a suspicious death, hostile white Bureau supervisors and sympathetic Black activists , where will her loyalty land?

 

Also from Kensington: Justice Hustlers series #4: SIDE CHICK NATION, the first novel published about Hurricane Maria, was selected for first place in the International Latino Book Awards for a novel in English that is an adventure or drama. The story is about a young sex worker from NYC who was pimped as a teen, and when she gets caught in the disaster, she’s politically awakened to action about colonization and climate change.

 

 

Also OUT NOW on Orion Magazine!

The Mystery Woman in Room Three

Two undocumented Dominican teen girls in Florida uncover a senate kidnapping plot to stop the Green New Deal. Can they build a team of young activists to foil the plot and save the earth?

(free & available online)